via Fox News

This morning, officials on two continents raided top members of the hacker group LulzSec, an offshoot of Anonymous. According to a Fox News exclusive, the evidence used against them had been gathered by Hector Xavier Monsegur or “Sabu,” who was outed as LulzSec's leader last June. Sources told Fox that Sabu had been working with the government for months.

Under the alias "Sabu," Mr. Monsegur, an unemployed, 28-year-old father of two, "allegedly commanded a loosely organized, international team of perhaps thousands hackers from his nerve center in a public housing project on New York’s Lower East Side."

Mr. Monsegur apparently started working as a cooperating witness when he was identified by the FBI and pleaded guilty to "hacking-related charges" in August, in a case that will be unsealed today.

Officials believe LulzSec is responsible for billions of dollars in damage for malwebolence against the CIA, FBI, defense contractors, Fox, and Sony, among other corporations, international banks, and government entities.

As part of the raid, three men were arrested and two were charged with conspiracy. The indictment was filed in federal court in the Southern District of New York and is expected to be unsealed this morning. Of the five suspects, two men were from Great Britiain, two were from Ireland, and one was from Chicago.

Among those expected to be identified in the indictment, says Fox, are Jeremy Hammond aka “Anarchaos,” of Chicago, Jake Davis, aka “Topiary,” and Ryan Ackroyd, aka “Kayla” of London. Mr. Hammond, reportedly also a member of Anonymous, was allegedly behind the hack on Stratford, the U.S. security firm. Last July, the UK police arrested a 19-year-old believed to be "Topiary," who was once called LulzSec's "No. 2." Mr. Ackroyd, Sabu's "top deputy," according to Fox, allegedly found vulnerabilities in the U.S. Senate's computer systems and sent the intel to Sabu.

“This is devastating to the organization,” said an FBIofficial involved with the investigation. “We’re chopping off the head of LulzSec.”

In sharing theories on why LulzSec, the tech-smart "rocker hackers" disbanded last June, The Week quipped, 'Why quit while you're ahead" Reason number one? Getting caught.

In June, LulzSec announced its retirement (after "50 days of lulz") with the tweet, "What a coincidence. George Orwell was born on this day. (25 June 1903)." Shortly after that, the group jumped back to the Anonymous bandwagon to continue hacking governments under "Operation Anti-Sec."

(Twitter)

One of the spokespeople behind the Anonymous Twitter account hosted an "ask me anything" session on Reddit yesterday, during which the hacktivist rep talked Mexican cartels, Occupy Wall Street and various #ops around the world. Anonymous captured the public's imagination and inspired fear with stunts like temporarily taking down the websites of large corporations and taking over Rupert Murdoch's The Sun, at the same time laying claim to high-profile hacks such as the filching of credit card information from Playstation users. But the group isn't as all-powerful as the FBI seems to fear.

"How do you think hackers within 'Anonymous' compare to those hackers employed by governments to carry out strategic hacks?" one Redditor asked. "Anonymous members are so often branded as script kiddies."

"We don't think they compare at all," the Anonymous rep answered. "Usually, most of the times, you will not find any high profile hacking skills within Anonymous. For a reason: It's not needed. Anonymous, basically, is a very loose bunch of random Internet people. Few of them are hackers."

There you have it, folks. Anonymous isn't a group of hackers--their choice of attack is always to flood websites with queries until the target gets overloaded.

"But," Anonymous continued, "Poke them hard enough and they might show you some wizard stuff (hbgary). But this is done by very few people. The masses just cheer and become inspired. To do better stuff. It's why we'll win."

Hacking the Hackers: Volume 3. Following recent intelligence-based raids in New York and London, UK officers from the Metropolitan Police Service's Central e-Crime Unit arrested a 19-year-old man they believe to be "Topiary," a spokesman for both LulzSec and Anonymous. The arrest took place at a residential address in the Shetland Islands and the suspect is being transported to a police station in central London during an ongoing search of the address.  Of course, if its anything like the FBI raid at the McKibbon lofts, the suspect could just be some dude in a band guilty of not password-protecting his Wifi account.

Today’s arrest was related to investigation into " network intrusions and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against a number of international business and intelligence agencies by what is believed to be the same hacking group," according to the Metropolitan Police website. On July 21st, Topiary wiped his prolific Twitter stream except for one missive: "You cannot arrest an idea."

Gawker's Adrian Chen deep dives into everything we know about Topiary, a "skilled and reckless showman, happy to taunt and boast in his accent-tinted English then bask in the attention that resulted." As Mr. Chen notes, "If it pans out, Topiary's arrest is the biggest blow yet to LulzSec and Anonymous, showing even the most senior members are vulnerable."